Blaze by Richard Bachman Page A

me, you brainless moose! ”
    â€œFuck you!” Blaze cried, the nameless thing finally leaping all the way free. “Fuck you, fuck you!”
    â€œCome here,” The Law said. His eyes were huge, bugging out. The hand holding The Paddle had gone white. “Come here, you bag of God’s trash.”
    And with the nameless thing that was rage now out of him, and because he was after all a child, Blaze went.

    When he walked out of The Law’s study twenty minutes later, his breath whistling raggedly in his throat and his nose bleeding—but still dry-eyed and close-mouthed—he became a Hetton House legend.

    He was done with Arithmetic. During October and most of November, instead of going to Room 7, he went to Room 19 study hall. That was fine by Blaze. It was two weeks before he could lie on his back comfortably, and then that was fine, too.
    One day in late November, he was once more summoned to Headmaster Coslaw’s office. Sitting there in front of the blackboard were a man and a woman of middle age. To Blaze, they looked dry. Like they might have been blown in on the late autumn wind like leaves.
    The Law was seated behind his desk. His bowling shirt was nowhere to be seen. The room was cold because the window had been opened to let in the bright, thin November sun. Besides being a bowling nut, The Law was a fresh air fiend. The visiting couple did not seem to mind. The dry man was wearing a gray suit-jacket with padded shoulders and a string tie. The dry woman was wearing a plaid coat and a white blouse under it. Both had blocky, vein-ridged hands. His were callused. Hers were cracked and red.
    â€œMr. and Mrs. Bowie, this is the boy of whom I spoke. Take off your hat, young Blaisdell.”
    Blaze took off his Red Sox cap.
    Mr. Bowie looked at him critically. “He’s a big ’un. Only eleven, you say?”
    â€œTwelve next month. He’ll be a good help around your place.”
    â€œHe ain’t got nothin, does he?” Mrs. Bowie asked. Her voice was high and reedy. It sounded strange coming from that mammoth breast, which rose under her plaid coat like a comber at Higgins Beach. “No TB nor nothin?”
    â€œHe’s been tested,” said Coslaw. “All our boys are tested regularly. State requirement.”
    â€œCan he chop wood, that’s what I need to know,” Mr. Bowie said. His face was thin and haggard, the face of an unsuccessful TV preacher.
    â€œI’m sure he can,” said Coslaw. “I’m sure he’s capable of hard work. Hard physical work, I mean. He is poor at Arithmetic.”
    Mrs. Bowie smiled. It was all lip and no teeth. “I do the cipherin.” She turned to her husband. “Hubert?”
    Bowie considered, then nodded. “Ayuh.”
    â€œStep out, please, young Blaisdell,” The Law said. “I’ll speak to you later.”
    And so, without a word spoken by him, Blaze became a ward of the Bowies.

    â€œI don’t want you to go,” John said. He was sitting on the cot next to Blaze’s, watching as Blaze loaded a zipper bag with his few personal possessions. Most, like the zipper bag itself, had been provided by Hetton House.
    â€œI’m sorry,” Blaze said, but he wasn’t, or not entirely—he only wished Johnny could come along.
    â€œThey’ll start pounding on me as soon as you’re down the road. Everybody will.” John’s eyes moved rapidly back and forth in their sockets, and he picked at a fresh pimple on the side of his nose.
    â€œNo they won’t.”
    â€œThey will, and you know it.”
    Blaze did know it. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it. “I got to go. I’m a minor.” He smiled at John. “Miner, forty-niner, dreadful sorry, Clementine.”
    For Blaze, this was nearly Juvenalian wit, but John didn’t even smile. He reached out and grasped Blaze’s arm hard, as if to store its